Term Paper

TESL2023

TESL603
Student Number: 22008142
Name: Michael Asante
Topic: Written Monologue for Opaque
Word Analysis Lessons
Lesson 1
Good morning, class! How are you all doing today? I hope you’re all doing well and that you’re
ready for today’s lesson. Up till now, we have discussed base forms in transparent words and
how to recognize them. Over the course of this term, we’re going to discuss morphophonological
rules and how they are applied when it comes to deriving opaque words.

Before we delve into the details, I will give you a brief introduction and a review of word
analysis and morphology in the English language. First of all, let’s discuss word analysis. When
we examine a word to derive its meaning, we call this word analysis. The process of analyzing
words and the derivation of their meaning based on these analyses is a vital component of both
English language morphology and English language phonology. We can therefore insinuate that
word analysis is a key constituent of the concept field of morphophonolgy.

As you probably noticed, morphophonology is a combination of the linguistic disciplines of

First, let’s talk about morphology. Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. It
involves the explanation of the formation of words and their relationships to other words in a
language. Obviously the language we are using is English, so explaining English word formation
and the relationship of words in English. Additionally, it involves analyzing the structure of
English words. This includes the analysis of stems, roots, and affixes. For your information, an
affix is a graph that can be added to word to change its meaning and/or context. You may already
be familiar with the two kinds of affixes, prefixes and suffixes, and that we place them at the
beginning and the end of words respectively. For example, ‘un-’ and ‘im-’ are prefixes seen in
words such as ‘unthinkable’ and ‘impossible’ respectively. Suffix examples include ‘-ment’ and
‘-ology’ seen in words like development and biology respectively.

A stem is any morpheme combination of morphemes to which we can add a prefix or a suffix.
You may be asking yourself “What is a morpheme”? I’ll answer that for you. A morpheme is the
smallest possible unit of meaning in a language. Affixes can be considered as morphemes, as can
certain words. Consider the word ‘unthinkable’. Unthinkable is composed of three morphemes,
the affixes un- and -able and the word think.
A root is the base form of a word that remains when affixes are removed. If we go back to the
‘unthinkable’ example, when we remove the prefix ‘un-’ and the suffix ‘-able’, we are left with
the word ‘think’, which can’t be broken down any further without destroying the meaning of the
word. Hence, it is referred to as the root.

Morphology also involves the observation of speech, intonation and stress in a language, all of
which influence the manner in which words are pronounced in English. It also involves the
observation of the alteration of the context of how words are pronounced and what the word
means in English.

Now let’s quickly review phonology. Phonology is the study of how speech sounds form patterns
in a language. Speech is obviously a major aspect of communicating languages and so the
appropriate sounds or phonemes are a major component of any spoken language. If morphology
is concerned with how a word is formed and its appearance, phonology is concerned with how
the word sounds and its pronunciation. It involves the determination of native sounds that are
frequently used in a language and foreign sounds that aren’t used in a language. It also involves
the determination of appropriate sound combinations that form genuine words versus
unintelligible gibberish. In addition, it also involves the reasoning behind essential phonetic
features in identifying words.

When both the principles of morphology and phonology are united, we then have the linguistic
field of morphophonoloy. The formation of words in English is a major aspect of
morphophonology and involves many morphophonological rules, which are to do with the
appearance of the word and the pronunciation (in other words, its form and its sound). Over the
course of the term, our primary focus will be on two specific types of morphophonological rules
that are used in English word formation, deletion rules and change rules. In our next lesson, we
will discuss three rules for deletion. Namely, the vowel deletion rule, e-deletion rule and the s-
deletion rule. That will be all for today, class. Have a good day and see you in the next lesson.
Lesson 2

Welcome back, everyone! Are you ready for today’s lesson? That’s great! As I mentioned in the
previous lesson, we will be looking at morphophonological deletion rules. If you remember, I
mentioned three deletion rules that we will be discussing. The rules I mentioned were the vowel
deletion rule, the e-deletion rule and the s-deletion rule. But before we get to the meat and
potatoes of three rules, we need to first discuss what a deletion rule is. So let’s get started.

In morphphonology, a deletion rule is a rule that involves the ‘deletion’ of any sound form
(usually called phoneme) of a particular morpheme that would be present in a specific word or
phrase. The sound form is removed from the word/phrase, typically to change the meaning and
context. Deletion may also be referred to as ‘elision’, and sometimes it is utilized to describe
certain scenarios where two words are put together when the final phoneme is entirely omitted.
In the English language, there are many, many words that have undergone deletion rules, a lot of
which you may be familiar with but were unaware that they were subject to the rule. We’re going
to look at several examples in order to see deletion rules in action and to get a better
understanding about how exactly these rules work.

So as you can see here, these are the three deletion rules that we’ll be discussing, vowel deletion,
e-deletion and s-deletion. For today’s lesson, we will focus primarily on vowel deletion, as it is a
broad deletion rule.

As its name implies, vowel deletion involves deleting the last vowel of a morpheme. The vowel
can only be removed if the morpheme that follows the said morpheme also begins with a vowel.
The rule is inapplicable in two scenarios: if the neighbouring morpheme begins with a consonant
and if there is no subsequent morpheme after the morpheme in question. Concerning consonants
in subsequent vowel, there is one exceptional consonant that the vowel deletion rule applies, and
that is the consonant ‘h’. This is due to the fact that the phoneme /h/ acts as a vowel rather than a
consonant when it is pronounced. Hence, it can also be considered a vowel and consequently the
vowel deletion rule can also be applied to it. As I mentioned earlier, the vowel deletion rule is
quite broad, compared to more specific rules like e-deletion and s-deletion. As a result, it is the
most common morphophonological rules in the English language. Now let’s have a look at some
examples so that we can gain some insight into this rule.
When it comes to removing vowels from morphemes, the vowel deletion rule is typically seen in
the alternate form many prefixes in English. Let’s look at the first example here. The ‘anti-’
prefix, which you should all be familiar with. Look at the first word here, antipathy. If we divide
the words into its morphemes, we have ‘anti’ and we have subsequent ‘pathy’. We can see that
the last letter of anti is the vowel ‘i’. If we look at the following morpheme ‘pathy’, you’ll notice
that it begins with the consonant ‘p’. As a result, there is no vowel deletion that occurs, based on
the situation we discussed earlier in which the rule does not apply to subsequent morphemes
starting with a consonant. Now let’s look at the other word in this example, antagonize. You’ll
notice that when we compare antagonize with antipathy that the prefix anti looks different in
antagonize compared to the base form ‘anti’. When we break it down into its morphemes, anti
and agonize, we can see that after anti, the subsequent morpheme agonize begins with the vowel
‘a’. As a result, the rule is applicable here, so the ‘i’ is deleted and the prefix is altered to become
‘ant-’. Hence we see antagonize. We don’t say ‘antiagonize’ even though we know the base
prefix is anti. We apply the deletion rule and alter the prefix.

Let’s have a look at example 2. Here we have the prefix ‘apo-’. You can see in the word apology,
no vowel deletion occurs. When apology is divided into the morphemes apo and logy, we see
that logy begins with the consonant ‘l’. This means that the rule does not apply. Hence, ‘apo’ is
left untouched. If we look at the other word ‘apanthropy’, which consists of the morphemes
‘apo’ and ‘anthropy’, we see that because anthropy starts with the vowel ‘a’, so the rule applies
and the ‘o’ in apo is deleted to become ‘ap’. Notice here too, we do not say apoanthropy, we say
apanthropy.

The vowel deletion rule can also be applied to suffixes and roots too, not just prefixes. Let’s
consider the examples here with the suffix ‘-ate’. We have the word create. When it’s broken it
down into the morphemes, we get ‘cre-’ and ‘-ate’. Obviously, there is no morpheme after the
morpheme ‘ate’, so the suffix is left alone since the rule doesn’t apply. How about the noun form
of create, creation? When it’s broken down into its morphemes, we have ‘cre-’, ‘-ate’ and ‘-ion’.
Looking at ion, we see that it begins with the consonant ‘i’, so we remove the vowel ‘e’ to get
the modified suffix -at. Looking at the second example with ‘theo-’, in the word ‘theology’, we
see that ‘theo’ is left untouched since the morpheme logy starts with ‘l’.
Yet in the word ‘polytheism’, we can see that the morpheme ‘theo’ has been modified to ‘the’.
When polytheism is divided into its morphemes (‘poly-’, ‘theo-’ and ‘-ism’) we see that because
‘ism’ starts with an ‘i’, ‘theo’ is subject to the rule and the ‘o’ is removed, leaving us with ‘the’.

As I mentioned earlier, the /h/ sound is treated like a vowel, which makes the consonant h an
exception to the rule. Let’s have a look at these examples. Here we have the word anthelion,
which consists of the morphemes anti and hellion. As hellion begins with ‘h’, the ‘i’ in anti is
deleted, leaving us with ant-, just as we have seen in the previous examples where the subsequent
morphemes start with vowels. The same is true in the second example, catholic. We see the
morphemes cata and holic. Since holic starts with ‘h’, the ‘a’ in cata is deleted, leaving us with
the modified ‘cat’. Hence we see catholic and not ‘cataholic’. We also see anthelion and not
antihellion.

There are other scenarios in which the vowel deletion rule does not apply. This rule is restricted
to morphemes that possess two or more vowels. If the morpheme contains only one vowel, the
rule does not apply, even if the neighbouring morpheme begins with a vowel or h sound. Look at
these examples. In example 1, with the prefix bi-, we have two words, biped and biennial. In
biped, we see that since the morpheme –ped begins with the consonant ‘p’, that bi- is left
unchanged. But we also see that the same phenomenon occurs with biennial as well, despite the
fact the morpheme ennial begins with the vowel ‘e’. This is because ‘bi’ only retains one
syllable, so the rule doesn’t apply. Consider the example with prefix ‘re-’, ‘reply’ and ‘react’.
The same occurrence can be seen here, even with react which contains the morpheme -act which
begins with ‘a’. This is because ‘re’ only possesses one syllable.

Another scenario that is exempt to the rule is one in which the modified prefix that was subject to
vowel deletion resembles another base prefix. You can see in the examples that both of the
modified prefixes also exist as base affixes as well. The prefixes ‘per’ and ‘an’ exist as base
affixes that aren’t modified by the rule. Since there is an uncanny resemblance, they are exempt
from the rule.

And with that, we will bring the lesson to a close for today. Before we end the class, I’d like you
to take this test on vowel deletion.
Very good! In our next lesson, we will discuss the two other deletion rules, e-deletion and s-
deletion. Have a good day and I’ll see you next time.

Lesson 3

Hello everyone! I hope that everything is going well. We are really making serious headway into
our word analysis discussion. We are still on the topic of morphophonological deletion rules. In
our last lesson, we determined what a deletion rule is and we discussed the vowel deletion rule in
great detail. In today’s lesson, we’re going to discuss two other deletion rules, namely the e-
deletion rule and the s-deletion rule

Okay, so let’s get right into it and look at the e-deletion rule first.

Despite its name, the e-deletion rule not only involves the removing the final ‘e’ vowel of a
morpheme if the subsequent morpheme begins with a vowel, but it also involves the removal of
the vowel ‘o’. As a result, this rule typically affects words that end with the suffixes –er and –or,
as we will soon see in some examples. Similar to the vowel deletion rule, the rule usually is
applicable to moprhemes that contain two or more syllables. Furthermore, like the vowel
deletion rule, it is a quite common morphophonological deleteon rule in the English language.
Let’s have a look at some examples of this rule in action, shall we?

Here’s the first example, the morpheme mater. This morpheme is derived from Greek and means
mother. You have likely seen it in words like maternal. If we breakdown maternal into its base
morphemes, we get mater and nal. Because nal begins with the consonant ‘n’, mater is left
unaltered in its base form. However, if we look at the word matrilineal, we see that instead of
mater, we have the altered form ‘matr’. Looking at the base morphemes, we can see mater and
ilineal. Since -ilineal begins with the vowel ‘i’, mater undergoes ‘e’ deletion. Hence we see matr-
instead of mater-. The same principle applies with the second example. We see the morpheme
‘meter’ here. Notice how in the word diameter, if we break it down to its morphemes ‘dia’ and
‘meter’, we see that no e-deletion takes place as there is no morpheme that follows after meter,
hence the morpheme is left untouched. When we look at the word metric however, we see that e-
deletion does occur. When metric is fragmented into its morphemes, ‘meter’ and ‘ic’, we observe
that since ‘ic’ begins with the vowel ‘i’, meter loses its ‘e’ to become ‘metr’ instead.
We notice that just like with the vowel deletion rule, the e-deletion rule also has an effect on
suffixes and roots, not only prefixes. Let’s have a look at these examples.

In the first example, we see the words actor and actress. You’ll notice that actress is a
combination of the morphemes actor and the suffix –ess. We can see that the vowel ‘o’ is
removed from actor to become ‘actr’ in the word actress, since ess begins with the vowel e.
Remember that, as I said earlier, the e-deletion rule, the vowel ‘o’ can also be removed in certain
situations, not just the vowel ‘e’. In the second example with aviator and aviatrix, we can see that
aviatrix is a combination of ‘aviator’ and ‘ix’. Because ‘ix’ starts with ‘i’, ‘o’ is deleted from
aviator to become ‘aviatr’ in the words ‘aviatrix’. In the third example, we have the words ‘enter’
and ‘entrance’. Entrance is a combination of the morphemes ‘enter’ and ‘ance’. Since ‘ance’
starts with the vowel ‘a’, the deletion rule applies and e is removed from enter to become ‘entr’
in entrance.

Now that we have finished discussing the e-deletion rule in detail, let’s have a look at the third
deletion rule, the s-deletion rule. This rule is concerned with the removal of the consonant ‘s’
from a morpheme, if it is preceded the prefix ‘ex’. Let’s have a look at the following examples to
gain some clarity. In the first example, we can see the morpheme ‘ser’ which is seen in the word
‘insert’, which consists of three parts, ‘in’, ‘ser’ and ‘t’. Here, no s-deletion occurs because ‘ser’
is not preceded by the prefix ‘ex’. We see that it is rather preceded by the prefix ‘in’. When we
look at the word ‘exert’, we see that it is made up of three parts, ‘ex’, ‘ser’ and ‘t’. Here, we can
see that ‘ser’ is preceded by ‘ex’. Consequently, s-deletion takes place and we see that ‘ser’
becomes ‘er’ in exert. Moving on to example two, we see the morpheme ‘sist’. In the first word,
resist (composed of ‘re’ and ‘sist’), because ‘sist’ is preceded be the prefix ‘re’, no s-deletion
occurs in ‘sist’ and it is left untouched. However, in the word exist (composed of ‘ex’ and ‘sist’),
we see that ‘sist’ is preceded by ‘ex’. As a result, ‘s’ is removed from ‘sist’ to become ‘ist; in
exist. We see the same occurrence in the third example with the morpheme ‘spir’. We can see in
word inspire, which is composed of ‘in’, ‘spir’ and ‘e’, that no s-deletion occurs as the preceding
prefix isn’t ‘ex’ but rather ‘in’. In the second word expire, composed of ‘ex’ and ‘spire’, we see
that s-deletion does occur due to the presence of the prefix ‘ex’. The ‘s’ is removes from ‘spire’
to become ‘pire’ in expire.
That about sums up the three deletion rules. In our next lesson, I will introduce you to the next
category of morphophonological rules called ‘change rules’. Before we end the class, I’d like
you to take this test on e and s deletion. Read the instructions carefully and answer the questions.

Okay! That will be all for today, class. I will see you next time!

Lesson 4

Hello again class! How is everybody today? I hope you’re all doing well because we’re about to
have a detailed discussion today that will require your full attention. In our previous lessons, we
discussed the definition and criteria for deletion rules and we studied three of them in detail,
vowel deletion, e-deletion and s-deletion. Today, we’re going to talk about the second group of
morphophonological rules that we said we would deliberate over, which are the
morphophonological change rules.

Alright, So let’s get begin!

First, we need to talk about what the change rules are. You probably inferred it already, but in
case you didn’t, change rules involve the ‘modification’ or ‘change’ of a particular sound form of
a morpheme in a word or phrase to another sound form. Just like with the deletion rules, we will
discuss three morphophonological change rules in the English language. They are the e-change
rule, the t-change rule and the v-change rule. Now let’s go ahead and discuss the e-change rule.
Similar to the e-deletion rule, its name is slightly misleading. For this rule, it involves the vowels
‘e’ or ‘o’ of base forms being changed to ‘u’ the beginning of the subsequent morpheme is a
consonant. Typically, morphemes that end with –el or –ol are affected by this rule. Let’s look at
some examples.

Here we have two morphemes, ‘pel’ and ‘cel’. Let’s look at ‘pel’ first. You can see in the word
‘propel’, we can see pel is left unchanged, since there is no subsequent morpheme attached to it.
In the word propulsion however, we see that the ‘e’ in pel has been changed to the vowel ‘u’,
forming the modified morpheme ‘pul’, due to the fact that the morpheme that follows it (sion)
begins with the consonant ‘s’. The same occurs in the second example with ‘cel’. In the word
cellar, cel is not modified because the l at the beginning of the morpheme ‘lar’ has been
assimilated into the final l of the morpheme ‘cel’. Because of this, we have to consider the vowel
‘a’ as the beginning of the subsequent morpheme. Consequently, cel is left alone. Conversely, in
the word occult (containing oc, cel and t), since the morpheme ‘t’ follows cel, it is changed to
cul. Let’s look at two more examples, col and ol.

With the word colony, the morpheme ‘on’ that is after ‘col’ begins with a vowel, ‘o’. It remains
untouched as a result. In the word culture, this isn’t the case because the morpheme ture which
follows col begins with ‘t’. Because of this, the o is changed to u, which modifies ‘col’ into ‘cul’.

The ol morpheme in adolescent and adult experiences the same thing. Adolescent contains four
morphemes, ‘ad’, ‘ol’, ‘esc’ and ‘ent’. The o in ol is left unchanged due to the beginning of the
following morpheme esc beginning with the vowel ‘e’. Looking at adult, we see that the
morpheme ‘t’ that follows ‘ol’ is a consonant, so the ‘o’ in ‘ol’ is changed ‘u’, making it ‘ul’
instead.

It should be noted that sometimes the morpheme ‘al’ can also be influenced by the e-change rule.
Looking at the examples with ‘sal’ can ‘calc’, we observe that in the words salient and calculate,
the base forms are unchanged due to the presence of a vowel in the following morphemes (ient
and ulate respectively). In the words result and inculcate, the a vowel in sal and calc is changed
to ‘u’, since their following morphemes obey the rule, giving us sul and culc respectively. With
inculcate and result, the vowel e has additionally been weakened, which allows makes them
eligible for applicability of the rule.

Okay! That’s enough for today! Before we finish the class, here is a test on the e-change rule that
I’d like you to take. Follow the instructions and answer the questions.

Alright! In our next and final lesson, we will be discussing the two other change rules, the t-
change rule and the v-change rule. Have a great day and until next time!

Lesson 5

Welcome back, everyone! Are you ready for today’s lesson? Very good! In our previous lesson,
we talked about change rules and we discussed the e-change rule. I would like you to take this
test on the e-change rule. Read the instructions and answer the questions.
Great! As I mentioned at the end of the previous lesson, we’re going to discuss the remaining
two morphophonological change rules, the t-change rule and the v-change rule. First, we will
discuss the t-change rule.

The t-change rule involves the change of the ‘t’ consonant in morphemes that retain it as the final
letter. If the suffixes –y, -e, -is, and –ia are added to said morphemes, phoneme [t] is changed to
[s]. The [s] phoneme is visually represented with ‘s’ or ‘c’, depending on the circumstances.

As I stated earlier, this rule affects morphemes that end with ‘t’. Moreover, the rule generally
applies to related word pairs, as you will see in the upcoming examples.

Looking at the first example here, with the suffix –y, we can see that the word pairs vacant and
vacancy. Vacancy is a combination of three morphemes, vac-, ant- and –cy. Because there is a –y
suffix following the morpheme ‘ant’, which ends with the consonant ‘t’, the ‘t’ is changed to ‘c’,
which modifies ‘ant’ to ‘anc’.

The same can be seen in the second example. Here we have the related words secret and secrecy.
You can see in the morpheme breakdown that the morpheme ‘t’ precedes the suffix ‘-y’. The rule
applies here, so ‘t’ is changed to c, which gives us the morphemes ‘se’, ‘cre’, ‘c’ and ‘y’. Let’s
look at example two, with the suffix –e. We can see more related words here as well. You can
see in the division of the word importance to morphemes that there is an –e suffix after the
morpheme ‘ant’. The morphemes last letter is ‘t’, therefore ‘t’ is changed to ‘c’, giving us
importance instead of ‘importante’. The same happens with assistance as well. The ‘t’ in the
morpheme that proceeds the suffix ‘-e’ is changed to ‘c’, giving us the words assistance as a
result.

Moving on to example 3, we have the suffix –is. Both ‘genesis’ and ‘synthesis’ have undergone
t-change as you can see with the morphemes. With genesis, the ‘t’ in ‘et’ is followed by –is, so
the ‘t’ is changed ‘s’. This also happens with syntheses, where the ‘t’ morpheme is also followed
by –is and is changed to ‘s’ as well. In example number four, the suffix is ‘-ia’. Looking at the
words anaesthesia and amnesia, you’ll notice that both have morphemes preceding the suffix ‘-
ia’ that possess a final ‘t’ (‘thet’ for anaesthesia and ‘mnet’ for amnesia). Based on the rule, the
‘t’ is changed to ‘s’, giving us the modified final products.
We are moving on to the final change rule that I said we would discuss, the v-change rule. As
you can tell from the name, this rule involves changing the final consonant ‘v’ of a morpheme to
the consonant ‘u’ if the subsequent morpheme begins with a consonant. So we can infer that this
rule applies to morphemes that end with the letter ‘v’. There are two circumstances where the
rule does not apply and, consequently, the v is left in its base form. The first is if the ‘v-ending’
morpheme is next to a morpheme beginning with a vowel. The second is if there is no sound
after the ‘v-ending’ morpheme. Let’s quickly have a look at the examples now to see the rule in
action.

We have three examples here, one with the morpheme ‘nav’, one with the morpheme ‘volv’ and
one with the morpheme ‘salv’. In each of the examples, one word is provided that hasn’t
undergone the v-change and one is shown that has. For nav, you can see that in the word naval,
there is no v-change. In nautical though, there is v-change, as you can see in the morphemes
beneath it. The ‘v’ in ‘nav’ is followed by ‘tic’ which begins with ‘t’. Look at the second
example containing volv. In the word revolve, we don’t see any v change, since there is a vowel
‘e’ that follows ‘volv’. But in the word revolution, v-change does occur. Looking at the divided
morphemes, you can see why. After the morpheme ‘volv’, we see that the subsequent ‘tion’
starts with ‘t’, so the rule applies and ‘volv’ is modified to ‘volu’ as a result.

Looking at the final example with the morpheme ‘salv’, we see the more of the same. There’s no
v change in the word salvage because there’s a vowel ‘a’ after ‘salv’. In salutation, we do see v
change, because ‘salv’ the subsequent morpheme ‘ta’ starts with a ‘t’, hence the rule applies.

Okay! Before we end this class, here is a test on t- change and v-change that I’d like you to take.
Read the instructions and answer the questions.

And with that, we have come to the end of our series of lessons concerning opaque word
analysis. I hope that you have gained an appropriate understanding of theses
morphophonological rules and that you can apply them in order to gain a better understanding of
the English words you come across. That will be all. Enjoy your holiday and see you next year!